As part of a marketing plan, some companies have set up coupon systems with the aim of attracting new customers or gaining the loyalty of old customers. Mechanisms have, therefore, been put in place by these companies, but they do not give their customers the opportunity to gain the optimum benefit from the various discount offers.
In the prior art, systems are known that disclose coupons in paper form which allow the customer to benefit from discounts on products. These coupons are cut from newspapers, magazines, or may be printed from interactive stations located in points of sale belonging to these companies.
The drawback of such systems is that of having customers who collect the various discount coupons, but cannot benefit from the various discount offers proposed to them since these coupons can be lost or damaged or may pass their expiration date.
Other systems are also known that provide coupons in digital form which are stored in a memory of a chip card. A customer who owns this chip card acquires these coupons from interactive stations located in the various points of sale of these companies.
These systems have the drawback that they require the customer to visit a point of sale to be able to collect these various coupons. Furthermore, the customer has to search on the interactive station to select the coupons of interest among the discount offers.
JP 2005-157787 A2 discloses a system which makes it possible to collect data, relating to ranges of products, contained in RFID/NFC (Radio Frequency Identification/Near Field Communication) tags and a mobile telephone belonging to the customer and comprising an RFID/NFC tag reader. These tags are available, for example, in newspapers or on advertising posters. That mobile telephone has a memory unit which allows it to store these data. The mobile telephone warns the customer via its RFID/NFC tag reader with an audio or vibrating signal, as the user passes a point of sale, of the presence of a product referenced in its memory within its range.
Such a system does not make it possible to determine the location of a product in a point of sale which is not located within the range of the RFID/NFC tag reader of the mobile telephone. Furthermore, it does not comprise means which allow the customer to have information items relating to the coupon, such as the availability of the associated product at the point of sale or the date of expiration of the coupon.
It could, therefore, be advantageous to provide systems and methods which allow the customer to gain optimum benefit from the various discount offers by means of the information items made available via a mobile terminal and an interactive station.
It could also be advantageous to provide systems having the advantage of being able to be adapted to existing hardware infrastructures.